


To Kill a God

by paradoxicalconverse



Category: Wynonna Earp (TV)
Genre: Angst, Complete, Demonology, F/F, but dolls is alive, smut at the beginning, takes place post s3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-05
Updated: 2019-02-05
Packaged: 2019-10-22 22:15:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17671115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paradoxicalconverse/pseuds/paradoxicalconverse
Summary: A demon with heavy repercussions is loose in the Ghost River Triangle, but the biggest issue is that Nicole doesn't have a single goddamn clue.ORWaverly tries her best to keep Nicole in the loop, but that's hard to remember when you've resurrected the god of death.





	To Kill a God

**Author's Note:**

> thanks to the wonderful [haughtkhakis](https://haughtkhakis.tumblr.com) on tumblr for the commission, this fic came to life inspired by [this headcanon](https://please-say-nine.tumblr.com/post/182518192524/if-youre-feeling-angsty-could-please-you-do) on [my tumblr](https://please-say-nine.tumblr.com).
> 
> I write a shit ton of headcanons over there if that's something you're interested in
> 
> on a different note, if you liked [ How an Unlit Cigarette Burns](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17521304), keep your eyes peeled for a follow up fic.

In theory, when they’re not running loose on the floors of the BBD offices with beady eyes and tiny hands, rats are cute, Waverly supposes. Only now with her feet tucked under her chair and a terrified glance pointed at where the rat had disappeared under the desk seconds prior, rats are possibly the worst thing to touch the surface of the earth.

“Emergency?” Nicole asks, flinging the door open and shaking her phone. “You text me _CODE RED, EMERGENCY!!_ In all caps, and it’s a rat?” She glares mockingly at Waverly. “You’ve fought literal demons before but you can’t take down one little rat on your own?”

“Where’s your proof that this rat isn’t a demon?” Waverly asks, but it’s feeble enough without her voice wobbling on top of it. She’ll have to practice.

Nicole sighs and slings Calamity’s old carrier over her shoulder from behind the door. “Which desk did it run under again?”

 

“You’re my hero,” Waverly croons. The weather outside bites the tips of her ears and nose red, but it’s nothing in comparison to watching Nicole set a loose rat free outside the police station after three minutes of coaxing it into Calamity’s cat carrier. Love really does work in strange ways, she supposes.

“God, you’re lucky you’re cute,” Nicole replies. She tosses the carrier in the back of the car and motions for Waverly to circle around to the passenger side. “I think we’ve had enough excitement, why don’t we head home for the day?”

“Oh?” Waverly hoists herself into the car and gives Nicole a look that she hopes screams sex. “Wynonna won’t be home until late, you know.”

“Trust me.” One hand finds its way to the wheel and the other to Waverly’s thigh. “I know.”

 

They’ve hardly managed to close the door behind them before Waverly’s wrapping her legs around Nicole’s hips and her teeth are sinking into where her jaw meets her throat. Her back hits the couch and Nicole’s already pulling at her shirt buttons and pressing kisses into her neck until the buttons turn into her jeans and those are being pushed down her legs.

There’s an urgency to it, to feel Nicole’s skin against hers and to hear her panting above her, beneath her, wherever she’ll have her, and Waverly can sink into it as Nicole’s lips paint galaxies into her hip bones and fingers draw patterns against her thighs.

Waverly’s back arches from the couch and her legs squeeze against Nicole’s head as she sucks her clit between her teeth and lets her hips roll to derive as much pleasure as she can from it. It’s unfair how close Nicole can get her with such little time, with a crook of her head and a flick of her tongue and it’s not like the vision from between her legs is _hurting_ the situation.

“Please,” Waverly pants. She twines her hands through Nicole’s hair and pulls her closer. Her toes clench in ecstasy. “Please, baby, please.”

“Tell me,” Nicole murmurs against her inner thigh. “Tell me how much you want me.”

It’s a game, Waverly knows. But god, is she a good player.

“Tell me what you want,” Nicole continues. She digs her fingers into Waverly’s thighs and drags them further apart so she can divulge further. As much as Waverly loves the feel of her, god, is Nicole addicted to the taste. “Tell me what I do to you.”

So, as Waverly falls apart, she tells her.

 

“You’re acting odd.” Waverly throws a furled eyebrow Wynonna’s way when she comes into the office the next morning, hot coffee in hand and a scarf furled around her neck to fend off the weather outside and _definitely_ not a hickey or two. Wynonna frowns from where she’s got her feet tucked under herself on her chair and her eyes scanning the floor. Her hand rests over the trigger of Peacemaker, a dangerous front as it’s still tucked into her boot.

Waverly figures she has to choose her battles and resigns. Losing a couple toes would probably teach her a lesson about gun handling, if anything.

“Shh,” Wynonna hisses for a moment. Her trigger finger goes white. “There was a fucking cockroach just a second ago. I swear to god.”

And Waverly’s not a _coward_ , but she imitates Wynonna and tucks her feet herself in her desk chair for safety. “All of this over one cockroach? If you try to shoot it you’re more likely to hurt yourself than it.”

Wynonna makes a face similar to if she’d swallowed a lemon but a bit of blood recedes back into her finger.

“Jesus,” a voice says from across the room and Wynonna yelps, coupled by pulling Peacemaker from her boot and aiming it at Nicole before frowning and tossing the gun onto the table.

Good god, she needs some handling lessons, Waverly thinks.

“What? The floor is lava?” Nicole laughs. “I was great at that game as a kid.”

“Bet your parents loved when you played the quiet game, too.”

“Wynonna,” Waverly snaps. She shoots Nicole an apologetic look that absolutely translates to, _I’ll make it up to you later._

“And for the record, the floor isn’t _lava_ , it’s _infested._ ” Wynonna’s hands wave across the barren tile floor as if to indicate that the paper Nedley can’t manage to toss into the recycling bin is the problem.

Nicole nods slowly as she glances around the floor of the office. “…With?”

“Cockroaches! I saw one earlier and was going to shoot it—”

Nicole rolls her eyes. “Good god, Earp. You’re a hazard at best. We’re not infected with cockroaches because you _think_ you saw one, but I’ll have Nedley ask a team to come in and look around. And for the last time, you can’t throw your gun around like that!”

Wynonna shakes her head and eyeballs the ground again before hesitantly unfurling herself from her chair and slipping Peacemaker back into her boot. “I’m getting some air,” she says. Waverly can’t quite classify the look she throws at Waverly as she leaves, but it’s different. It’s not Wynonna-esque. Her stomach churns, if only a bit.

“You think she’s okay?” Nicole asks, only it’s closer and Waverly’s whole body jumps in surprise. “Oh, sorry! Didn’t mean to...I thought you saw me come over.”

The feeling Waverly’s chest amplifies for a moment. “No, no, I’m fine. Wynonna just seemed…pretty shaken. By a cockroach.”

“To be fair Wynonna’s not a fan of most things except for bottles of jack and you, so I’m not fully positive you could blame her for much,” Nicole says. It’s a meager attempt to make her laugh but the gnawing in her stomach seems to fade just a bit when she does, so maybe it’s nothing more than unkempt nerves still reminiscent of the garden.

And she’s back now; she and Doc had crawled from vine-laden gates a little over a month ago tattered with scrapes and bruises and she’d fallen into Nicole’s arms without so much as a glance back, and that had been that.

Maybe it’s her mind playing tricks on her, but she thinks she can still see the gates sometimes, out of the corner of her eye, an unhinged threat.

To be fair, she’s always found that Nicole’s strong enough to close whatever unhinged memory of it she has.

“ _You’ve_ been shaken,” Nicole says. She drops to her knees and rights Waverly’s chair to face her. Hands rub over Waverly’s arms for a moment as if to ground her. “Since everything. Do you…do you remember anything? From when you were in there? Seeing Doc come get you, finding the door out…anything?”

Waverly’s fingers press against her temples to stave off the impending headache if she thinks to hard about it, like her own mind saves her from remembering. A blessing in disguise, if she dipped a bit harder and remembered what had been behind the vines. Maybe her guardian angel was simply the half of her that her father had given. “It’s just white.” Her voice goes soft. “And then I’m pushing open the door and falling into dirt, and you’re there. That’s it.”

“And that’s okay,” Nicole affirms, though the light in her eyes dims, if only just a bit. Her arms wrap Waverly’s shoulders and help hoist her out of her chair. “Why don’t we go grab some air for a second? I bet we can watch Wynonna shooting cat food cans if you want.”

A weak grains pulls at the corner of Waverly’s lips. It’s not the worst idea she’s ever heard, and it’s enough to numb the gnawing in her stomach.

Somewhere in the corner of the office, a cockroach finds its way through the caulking.

 

“So.” Nicole folds her arms across her chest and surveys the office the next morning. Wynonna sulks in the corner, powdered sugar on her nose and arms folded across her chest and directly avoiding eye contact with Waverly from across the room. “The team checked for an infestation. Said they couldn’t find anything.”

Wynonna rolls her eyes and dips her donut into  a coffee mug that Nicole _knows_ is sweetened with bourbon. “I know what I saw, Haught, and what I saw was a little motherfucker running around like he owned the damn place.”

Nicole’s hands fly up in surrender as she shoots a glance Waverly’s way. “I’m not saying you didn’t see one, Earp, I’m saying that seeing one doesn’t mean there’s an infestation of them.” She shoots a glance Waverly’s way for backup, who frowns and looks like she’d rather stay silent on the matter.

“It’s an old building!” Wynonna says. “This thing has been around earlier than Nedley became sheriff and that was _before_ my first run with the Banditos. It wasn’t an unreasonable guess; cockroaches like old shit!”

“Is it really so hard to admit that you may have jumped the gun?”

“Babe,” Waverly laughs in warning, wrapping a hand around Nicole’s waist and squeezing just a bit too much, tandem to Wynonna’s eye roll.

“I’m finishing my coffee in the file room where I can get some peace and quiet,  if anyone wants to keep bothering me,” Wynonna says as she snags her mug and the box with the rest of the doughnuts before escorting herself out.

“Is it so hard to place nice?” Waverly folds her arms over her chest and frowns at Nicole. “She’s practically your sister-in-law. Can’t you get all your bickering done later when we’re all old and going criminally insane in a retirement home?”

The pout Nicole makes in return is comical enough to make Waverly laugh, and the gnawing at her stomach she hasn’t been able to shake recedes just a tiny bit more.

“I want to have the bickering all done by the time we get to the retirement home, for posterity’s sake.”

Waverly wants to respond with something snarky when Doc pops his head in through one of the doors and dips his hat their direction. “Officer Haught,” he drawls. His mustache quivers. “I must request your assistance down at Shorty’s. There’s been a bit of a disagreement that Dolls is working on assuaging, but in the meantime we could use your womanpower.” Both he and his mustache disappear back around the doorframe.

“Bring me back a convict.”

“Anything for you, Waves.” The kiss is fleeting and as soon as Nicole has gone, the feeling of something unsaid begins to gnaw in the back of Waverly’s throat.

“Haught!” Wynonna yells triumphantly as the opposite door to the office blows open. “I’m fucking right!” A coffee mug with a donut hanging over the rim like a wedge of lemon hangs in one hand and a file that’s clearly seen better days hangs from the other. “Look at this shit—and, she’s not here.”

She blows an an unappreciative sigh from between her lips and the file drops to her side.

Maybe if Jeremy came through the door next with the same vivacity as the previous two Waverly could officially diagnose herself with whiplash.

“When Haught comes back could you kindly tell her to shove her own foot up her ass?”

“No.”

“You never let me do anything fun. Besides, I was right. There’s a fucking infestation.” She slaps the file down onto Waverly’s desk. “I went into the file room and I swear to god I saw at least _five_ mice scampering around and shitting on the floor.”

“So eloquent.” Waverly crosses her arms over her chest.

“I consider myself to be concise. But anyway, they all scattered when I came in the room but they were gnawing on files when I did. A fucking infestation!”

Containing her eye roll should be an Olympic sport at this point. She motions to the faded cover of the file, which, upon further inspection, has definitely been gnawed on and scratched. “This is a BBD file. They don’t keep them in the same filing room as the PD. I feel like this is more on Dolls than it is on Nicole.”

Wynonna shrugs and makes a face as she swallows down a sip of coffee laced bourbon. “The underlying motif here is that there’s an infestation and I called it.”

“Of mice,” Waverly says.

“Mice today, cockroaches yesterday, rats the day before that, I don’t particularly care what creepy-crawly has decided to come in and fuck around misfiled police reports, babygirl. All that matters here is—”

Waverly’s whole spine goes rigid. “What did you say?”

Wynonna blinks and stops mid sentence. “What?”

“Rats. You saw rats?”

“Yeah, a few. It was sometime late, after you and Nicole had already went home and I was a few cups of…coffee…deep, I figured I was probably seeing things.” Wynonna shrugs. “They were probably the ones that ate all the cockroaches except the one motherfucker who played chicken with me in here the next morning.”

Waverly’s not listening anymore though as shaking hands grab for the file and tear it open. Tiny footprints run over just about every page and bite marks decorate the entirety of the file. “Were they just chewing on this one?” Waverly asks as her fingers begin to rifle through the pages.

“Honestly, babygirl,” Wynonna says, but her eyes are peeled to Waverly trying to hunt for something. “Do you think I was focused on saving whatever file they were having for breakfast? I walked in, I found mice, and I saw my opportunity to get back at Haught.”

“First of all, stop it. Learn to be nice to her. Second, if I’m right…” She slips a paper out from in between the stack and flips the file back over, finger tracing against the faded BBD symbol until it locates something faintly sharpied underneath. _Sumerian Demons._ She sucks her breath between her teeth.

“Then we are so, _so_ fucked.”

 

Waverly faintly registers making it home and falling into the only desk at the Homestead, fingers running page over page from one of her Sumerian book she’d dragged from upstairs. Hair slips into her eyes, bloodshot and red, and her head dips for a moment.

“Baby?” Nicole asks, and a warm hand soothes her back as a mug as she places a mug of tea next to Waverly’s book. “Baby, what are you still doing up? It’s getting late.”

“Research,” Waverly says. “I promise I’ll come to bed soon, just a bit longer.”

Her neck aches and the gnawing in her stomach has begun to gnash at her throat.

It’s not quite enough for Nicole to press her lips to the top of Waverly’s head and head up the stairs, but it’s all she can do when Waverly’s like this.

 

Nicole wakes up the next morning to Waverly’s head buried in the middle of her book and an empty mug of tea next to her while she sleeps.

 

“You look like hell,” Wynonna says when Waverly slouches into the office the next morning.

She frowns and holds her cup of coffee closer to her face. Maybe it’s hot enough that the rising steam will barricade Wynonna’s somehow always perfect hair from view. “Maybe, but that’s just because I’ve been reading about it all night.”

“No, I think it’s definitely the page indentation in your cheek.”

“Lay off.” Nicole rolls her eyes and wraps her arms around the back of Waverly’s shoulders. “She was up all night probably studying something to cover _your_ ass.”

“Top shelf, though.”

She placidly ignores Wynonna. “I’m on patrol all day, baby. See you for dinner at eight?”

“Wouldn’t miss it,” Waverly replies as her head droops against Nicole’s shoulder. She wants to sink into Nicole’s warmth, wants to fall asleep in her arms, but Wynonna’s already making some asinine comment about her ass again and it’s time to go.

 

“Hit me with it.” Wynonna plops herself down into a rolly chair and kicks her feet up onto the desk. “You left yesterday before saying anything about being fucked, and you _know_ that’s my favorite pastime.”

“Namtar,” Waverly replies.

“I think it’s pronounced namaste,” Wynonna replies, and ducks as Waverly launches her empty coffee cup at Wynonna’s head.

“ _Namtar_.” Waverly shakes her head and thumbs through the Sumerian book on her desk before pulling it open to a bookmarked page. “It’s arguable if he was actually Sumerian or not which is why I was looking through the file to see if there was a file for him in there; usually it varies between that or Mesopotamian. Do you know if we have any of those files as well?”

Wynonna stares at her like she’s asked her to recite pi.

“Nevermind. But anyway.” She flips a few more pages and then tilts the book Wynonna’s direction. “He was sort of seen as a minor deity.”

“He’s ugly as hell,” Wynonna says. She takes a long sip of coffee.

“That’s really not the point I’m trying to make here,” Waverly sighs. “Minor deity of _death_.”

“Hmm.” Wynonna taps her chin for a second. “That doesn’t really seem like, I don’t know, a _minor_ thing? And besides, what does that have to do with anything? So he’s a god of death; I’ve got a big shiny gun.” She shakes her boot as if for emphasis.

“Well.” Waverly’s fingers trace over other a sequence of symbols that Wynonna would have a better chance of reading if she was tripping on acid. “He was also the god of something else.”

Wynonna quirks an eyebrow, and then her stomach falls through her feet.

“Pests.”

“So you’re saying…”

Waverly nods and takes a deep breath. “Yeah. The god of death was resurrected, and I think it’s my fault.”

“Okay,” Wynonna laughs. “Okay, okay, so we’re just going to _operate_ under the idea that you, a literal half angel, managed to summon a _god of death_ , without any explanation? We’re going to need to unpack some of that.”

“Balance,” Waverly replies, as if that’s supposed to answer the question. “It’s like…it’s like Jolene all over again. I think…When I opened those doors from the garden and left—the universe required balance. Like it did with Jolene. So when the gates of heaven opened—”

“The gates of hell did, too,” Wynonna breathes. Her eyes are wide and color drains from her face. “And the god of hell managed to get out, and now he’s running loose in the triangle.”

“Right,” Wynonna says as her gaze tips down to the floor. “Right, and while I’d _love_ to tangent off that more, I think we may have found how to find the source of our problem.”

Waverly follows suit to see a line of ants running out the door.

 

“If I had a nickel for everytime something supernatural brought me into this _goddamn basement_ —”

“If you’re going for quiet and subtle, you’re nailing it,” Waverly hisses. She turns her flashlight on Wynonna’s face and throws her the best frown that she can manage. “We’re literally trying to hunt down the god of death and you’re in here trying to compare how crazy your work shenanigans are?”

“Well?” Wynonna’s own flashlight paints circles of light on the ceiling as she waves her hands for emphasis. “I mean, what are the chances? We defeat a pack of spider eggs down here and the next thing you know, a Sumerian god is taking residence under the same god damn school?”

“Mesopotamian.”

“Whatever.”

“And my guess.” Waverly shifts around some rubble and glares her flashlight ahead for a second down the rest of the hallway. The renovations on the converting the school into suites had been put to a halt since half the workers were too afraid to finish it and the owners had, unfortunately, had their faces stolen, which left it to sit untouched until further notice. “Is that it was free real estate for him. I can’t imagine having a seal here didn’t reek of supernatural the moment he got out of hell. I’m sure it was like a magnetic pull.”

“The world needs to really stop trying to balance itself out. Shit gets too fucked.”

And, well. Wynonna’s not _wrong._

The further Waverly shines her light down the hallway, the more it seems to recede, as if to swallow it whole. Damn the sun setting at three in the afternoon. “Just for the record, I don’t think we can consider finding the god of death and you aiming your gun at it a good plan for how to take him down.”

“Pretty sure it won’t be a problem when I put lead in his ass.”

“You can’t handle your problems by shooting them.”

Wynonna takes the lead over Waverly and cocks her gun. “Watch me.”

 

Eight o’clock comes and goes and Waverly’s still not home. The tofu in the oven has gone cold and Nicole’s teeth have scraped her nails down to the nubs as she paces grooves into the floor of the Homestead.

 

“So, when you’re in a video game and you see a door with light shining on the other side, you open it, right?” Wynonna whispers. Her foot paws at the orange glow seeping from the underneath the door, licking against the floorboards and curling in on itself.

“This isn’t a video game!” Waverly warns, but Wynonna’s foot crashes against the door handle and knocks it off its hinges, blowing inwards.

“Send it!” Wynonna yells, and Waverly would probably agree that that’s overkill if something hideous doesn’t come crashing out a moment after, boils erupting over inflamed flesh as what Waverly _assumes_ to be a mouth erupts into a screech.

Wynonna’s gun is in her hand almost instantly, firing away at the mess of what could possibly be every disease Waverly’s ever seen compacted into a walking dumpster fire. It’s certainly not enough to kill the demon but it’s enough to anger it as it swings around on its heel and roars again, hands clawing furiously at Wynonna, who retreats further down the hallway and unloads more of her gun into it.

It’s certainly slowing down, but it’s not really in the mood to stop.

The gun clicks on more time and Wynonna’s eyes go wide as she realizes she’s out of lead.

“Hey, asshole!” Waverly shrieks, limbs shaking in terror as it turns to her. “Get over here! Let me distract you while my sister reloads her gun!”

She could be screeching Aesop’s fables for all it seems to care as its head snaps to the side and begins to stumble in her direction. Maybe not the most graceful, but it sure as shit is fast. Waverly rolls out of the way as it connects with the wall she’d backed herself up against a second previous and shouts again to keep it distracted.

She throws her body to the side again and waits for it to start ambling over, ready to dive out of—

The corner.

Waverly fucking Earp had backed herself into a corner with a pissed off demon finding its way towards her.

It’s last second thought that has her grabbing her phone from her back pocket and launching it forward.

“If you were trying to scare it off with Nicole’s nudes, I don’t think that would work!” Wynonna shouts from across the hallway. Her hands shake as she tries to drop another bullet into the revolver.

“Wynonna!”

“Well? I’ve seen Haught naked, she’s got a lot going for her!”

Waverly opens her mouth to say more when there’s a bang from somewhere down the hallway and then the feeling of something wet and warm seeping onto her tongue, followed by a splattering against the walls and Waverly’s whole body jerks backwards in disgust, reeling as the she registers that goo on her tongue is absolutely, and without a doubt, demon brains.

“Kill shot!” Wynonna yells. “Did I do it? Did we get him?”

Waverly’s a bit too busy clawing at her tongue to answer, but she figures the disintegrating piles of mush on the floor that were trying to kill her second ago are a fairly decent indicator.

 

Wynonna clears her throat and glances over at Waverly, covered head to toe in demon guts, slouching in the front seat of the truck. “So,” she says, and Waverly’s frown deepens. “Do you think it’ll stain?”

Waverly scoffs and looks away.

“Look, Waves, I’m _sorry_ I didn’t get gooed with you; but I mean, come on. We both were Mikshun for a second there, we both got covered in that spider sack stuff that weirdly reminded me of lube, maybe we didn’t _both_ have to get covered in guts this time? Promise I’ll take the fall next time around.”

The hint of a grin kisses at Waverly’s lips and she frowns harder to try to hide it.

“Also, to be a bit more serious, we, uh. We _did_ kill the demon of death. Maybe that might have some repercussions, giving him a taste of  his own medicine? Thoughts?”

“We didn’t kill him. Just put him back in Hell where he can’t really cause any mayhem up here anymore. You can’t really—you can’t really kill a god.”

Wynonna laughs and throws a wink Waverly’s direction. “You haven’t seen me after three shots of whiskey.”

 

The Old Man and the Sea somehow manages to get worse each time Nicole reads it, but maybe that has to do partly with the fact that she only reads it when anxiety claws at the insides of her stomach.

Six missed calls to Waverly hold her phone to the coffee table next to her as her teeth work against the last surviving fingernail she’s got.

Her feets bounce from where they’re kicked up on the foot of the couch and the hand holding the book wears holes through the pages like a worry stone. The front door creaks and it’s dangerous how quickly she’s on her feet, the book dropped on the coffee table by her phone.

Waverly’s there looking like death reincarnate, covered head to toe in some sort of goo that smells strongly enough to keep Nicole at a bit of a distance. “Good god—Waverly!” She grabs the blanket off the top of the couch and throws it over Waverly’s shoulders; it was her least favorite blanket, anyway. Now at least they have an _excuse_ to throw it out.  “Are you okay? What the hell happened to you? You had me worried sick, I’ve been calling you all day—”

“I’m okay, I’m okay,” Waverly says. She waves her hand. “I’m fine. A bit grossed out if anything, but nothing a shower can’t fix. I’m sorry I missed your calls. A, uh. A demon might’ve eaten my phone.”

Nicole’s whole body instantly goes rigid, spine pulled taut, and the hands that had been busy warming Waverly’s back freeze. “You…you fought a demon today?”

Waverly seems not to notice Nicole’s instant discomfort and shrugs. “Yeah, it was one that Wynonna and I had been tracking for a few days now and we finally got to take it down. Turns out it was the thing causing the pest problem in the offices, so I don’t think we really have to worry about that anymore.”

Nicole’s voice goes soft, so soft that Waverly’s afraid it might shatter. “You’ve been tracking down a demon for a few days and you didn’t think to tell me?”

It’s Waverly’s back that goes rigid now when she realizes what’s happening, and her heart plummets through her stomach. “Oh—no, I mean, it was really on and off, and just in the last day that we realized it was a demon, I just thought I was being paranoid, and you had already gone out on patrol when we realized how to track it down—”

“You went out,” Nicole interrupts, and Waverly’s voice dies in the back of her throat. “You _fought_ a demon today that damn near could have killed you and you didn’t think…you didn’t think to _tell_ me that?”

“No, Nicole, I didn’t think you—”

“Were important enough to know that kind of thing? Yeah, Waverly, I get it.” Nicole’s shoulders slump and her words shatter like dropped ice against the floor at Waverly’s feet.

Because she may have killed a god today but it sure as hell doesn’t feel like it now, what with Nicole tilting her head back and pinching the bridge of her nose to fight off an onslaught of tears that she knows must be coming and Waverly’s got a shitty old blanket wrapped around her shoulders, shaking.

Because she’d told Nicole she’d keep her better updated, that it was a _promise_ she’d made, and now here she is, covered head to foot in a demon’s blood that Nicole hadn’t eve been aware existed until now and an excuse falling dry on her tongue.

“Nicole…” She says, as if there’s anything she can actually say to that.

Nicole nods. She knows, and that’s the anchor that drowns Waverly. “Guess that talk didn’t mean as much to you as it meant to me.”

“That’s not true and you know it.”

Cold hands covered in bitten nail beds wave at Waverly for a moment before Nicole shakes her head and sighs. A tear snakes a rivulet down her cheek as she sticks her book and phone under her arm. “Yeah, well, you’re not making a very convincing case for yourself. Take a shower before you go to bed; I don’t want the couch smelling gross tomorrow morning after you’re done sleeping on it tonight.”

 

“Got room for one more in there?”

Waverly pokes her head around the door of the bedroom to where Nicole had been awake for the past twenty minutes, making faces at Calamity Jane who looks pleasantly unperturbed in a patch of morning sunlight in the bed.

Nicole glances up at the sound of her voice and males a face that Waverly can’t quite discern.

“Not particularly.”

It hurts about as much as Waverly deserves, anyway.

“Not even if I bring coffee with two sugars as a truce?”

Nicole eyes her precariously for a moment before sighing in resign and motioning her over. Calamity looks less pleased with the decision.

“I wanted say sorry,” Waverly says after a moment. Nicole takes a sip of coffee and pretends not to enjoy that Waverly knows how to make the perfect goddamn cup.

“I bet you did.”

Okay. She deserved that, too.

“I don’t really—I don’t really have an excuse, to be honest. It was all so sudden. I figured it out and stayed up all night researching it; I didn’t want to know what would happen if I was _wrong_ , you know? And then the next day, before I’m even sure what’s happening, Wynonna and I are following this trail of ants down to that old school Mercedes Gardner tried to renovate and Wynonna’s shooting at this thing and I’m throwing my phone at it, which, in hindsight, awful plan, and then it blew up all over my face and it got in my mouth, and _god_ , demon guts taste awful, did you know that?”

Nicole puts a hand on Waverly’s thigh and crooks her eyebrow as if to say, _the point?_

Waverly takes a deep breath and nods, twines her fingers together in her lap. “And I’m sorry. Because all of that screams something I should’ve told you about, and I didn’t. I messed up big time, and that’s my fault. And I’m sorry.”

Nicole stares at her for a moment, hands perched around her mug. “Thanks for the coffee, Waverly,” she says softly, and that’s her dismissal.

 

Maybe it’s always been a role in the Homestead or maybe Waverly’s reading to far into it when Nicole puts a cup of tea down in front of her at the table that night and slides into the seat next to her, but suddenly the weight on her shoulders is ten pounds less and whatever she’d been trying to translate a few seconds ago becomes pointless. “Hey,” she says.

“Hey.”

“Thanks for the tea.”

“Just how you like it.” Nicole nods and blows a breath out from between her lips. “I just wanted to say that…” She chews her lip for a second as if to try to scramble the words in her mouth so they come out correct. “You Earps are a party that’s tough to crash. It’s hard not to feel like an outsider, even for me.”

Waverly opens her mouth to say something and closes it when she sees Nicole’s hand raise.

“Hold on. Just let me say my piece. I love you, Waverly Earp. And you terrified me last night. I don’t want to stay in the loop because I think it’s fun to keep up with the latest demonic slaying that’s gone down in the Ghost River Triangle. I want to stay updated because I want to know that you’re safe, and if you’re not, I want to be the one there to keep you safe.”

Waverly nods. Her own indecency keeps her from opening her mouth, only Nicole doesn’t say anything more. She breathes out through her nose and leans back against the chair. Her feet brush against Waverly’s for just a second.

“I love you,” Waverly breathes, and she swears it’s her lungs that made her say it instead of her brain. “And I’m scared of getting you hurt. I’m scared that whenever you get dragged down into this, you won’t get pulled back up. I’m scared that you’ll realize everything is too crazy for you and you’ll go back to rock climbing in Nevada and probably Colorado next and I’ll be left in the dust, and I’m scared, more than anything, that you’ll get hurt now because I love you.”

Nicole blinks, as if she hadn’t been expecting the proclamation before laughing for a second with enough warmth to make Waverly’s ears burn red with love. “It’s a painful game, isn’t it?” she asks.

“Is that how you say you forgive me?”

The hint of a smile tugs at the corner of Nicole’s lips.  

**Author's Note:**

> one more HUGE thank you to haughtkhakis. kudos and comments make the author happy


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